


To Share The Cages They've Endured

by WhatEvenAmI



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Animal!verse, Gen, Torture, sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 21:35:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6210997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatEvenAmI/pseuds/WhatEvenAmI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Isaac Murphy could never leave an animal in need, even a dangerous one.</p><p>But when he learns the truth about HYDRA's experimental genetic practices, he might be in over his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Share The Cages They've Endured

Isaac wants to believe he won't end up dead for this.

He's been working for HYDRA for almost three years now, and SHIELD for longer than that. And no matter what he knows, a stubborn part of him insists there's got to be some mistake. These people are his friends. He's done so much work for them. They're trying to make a difference in the world. 

But he knows too much, now, about the kind of _differences_ they've already made. And anyway, he's designed some of their security himself. He knows exactly how it works. How  _well_ it works.

"Julie?"

Fingernails dig into his arm. "Don't you back out on me now."

"I'm not." At least he doesn't think he would. "I'm just scared."

" _You're_ scared," she snaps, "You haven't seen what they do. I have." She takes a breath, shakes her head.

"Jules?"

"Shut up with the _names_. We use code names from here on out, remember?"

"Right. Um. Eagle One?"

"Shut _up_ , Irwin."

Isaac's waited too long and let too much happen to back out now. He's fucked up the security systems  _just right_ so they'll go on the fritz at the perfect time. He's covered his tracks well enough that tomorrow morning they might be calling him in to try and recover the lost data. To sort things out. They've already done this once before, and it's a miracle they got away with that. These prisoners are far more high-priority, and as soon as they're needed on the next mission the whole of HYDRA will be on lockdown trying to find them.

That's if the scientific department doesn't notice they're missing first. If these two particular specimens are out of cryo when there's no mission, that means they're up for the next rounds of experimentation.

Rowan's going to take them, just like he took their last two rescues. Clean background, no ties to HYDRA, and a vacation house far from here where they can lay low until the whole thing blows over.

If it blows over.

Julie doesn't swipe her ID at the door. She doesn't have to. Isaac's cracked this place open like an Easter egg, and once they're in the van he'll reseal it like they were never here. Not like an Easter egg. Like a...like...

"Irwin. Need you to focus here."

"Right, sorry."

Julie goes in first, but Isaac can hear the pained, terrified whimpering of dogs left alone for too long, dogs left in pain. He can smell the musk, emanating from the darkness.

And then, from the doorway, he takes in what's become of Captain America and Bucky Barnes.

*

Isaac knows all his friends think he's naive. And he was, once. 

When he agreed to run tech for the scientific division of SHIELD, he was good at his job. Whatever he failed to notice at first, he was meticulous about his assignments. Then, about other peoples' assignments. Soon, everyone in his department, and a few people from other departments, came to him to double-check their projects before running any new programs. Rumor had it that despite the deceptively friendly demeanor the director seemed to exude, one minor fuckup and your ass might just be handed to you on a plate. Along with a termination notice, effective immediately.

Although Westfail was still around. So maybe not.

The higher-ups began to notice that Isaac's results were leagues ahead of his coworkers, and he rapidly received a series of promotions until he was working under Director Pierce himself. And that's when things started to get really shady.

He was first told he was naive as he began to get involved in activism. His friends confirmed it—affectionately, but sometimes with genuine concern, an element of warning. Even so, he thinks, he's pretty sure he knew something was wrong. All the late-night assignments, unlogged hours of work because he was instructed to keep certain things off-record. He knew, and he chose to look the other way. SHIELD had a shot at making a long-lasting impact on the world, and he wanted so badly to believe he was a part of that. He was doing  _good._

His eyes and ears could lie to him, but the tech didn't. Code was the one thing that never escaped his notice, and so notice he did, little by little. He had the foresight, at least, to look into the matter only from his home computer and not from the monitored ones at work.

But he'd still been one hell of a moron. He'd gone and talked _directly to_ Pierce about his concerns. Now he knows exactly where that could have gotten him. He knows all too well.

Luckily, he was young enough and dumb enough to get himself  _recruited_ instead.

Pierce had smiled like he actually thought Isaac's concerns were worth his time—lie number one, before either of them had said a word. He'd provided food, too, which at the time had seemed so _considerate_.

Looking back, Isaac realized HYDRA must've been keeping a sharp eye on him even then, because he'd known exactly what to offer—soy milk, and egg-free cookies made with fair-trade-certified chocolate chips. He'd eaten up the food and the lies—the HYDRA division was looking into unorthodox methods of genetic testing that would ultimately benefit the entire world. Imagine, for example, Pierce had said, a super-serum, like the kind that had been used on Captain America. The kind that could cure cancer. The kind that could gift any human with incredible physical capabilities. Broken bones, healed in less than two weeks. Blind people would see for the first time in their lives, while others would rise from wheelchairs and walk with ease.

He had made it sound like such a wonderful vision, Isaac had completely forgotten to question the methods. When Pierce asked him if he'd work for HYDRA, he'd jumped at the chance. And, when he was told that it would require some discretion, he had eagerly agreed.

And so he'd kept running the programs without checking to see what they did. Curiosity did get the better of him every now and again, but with all his regular SHIELD work plus the influx of secret HYDRA assignments, he was just too _busy_. And he  _stayed_ too busy right up until Julie had knocked on his door in the middle of the night, red-eyed and trembling, to ask if they could talk. Isaac thought, at first, that it might be her new boyfriend. 

She insisted on taking a walk to clear her head, and while they walked, she told him that he couldn't tell anyone what she'd just found out.

She'd been officially pulled off tech as soon as her training qualified her for field missions. That meant a lot of her missions would secretly be for HYDRA, and so she'd been told the truth that they both really knew all along. That HYDRA was causing frequent global catastrophes to orchestrate the setup for total world domination.

But they'd also branched out into genetic experimentation as a means of control. That, Isaac realized belatedly, was  _his_ division. He thought of all the projects he'd completed without looking into the details, lapping up the praise Pierce and Sitwell fed him. How fast he worked, his accuracy, the innovative contributions he'd made.

"Julie," he'd said quietly, "Tell me you're making this up. Please, please tell me you're making all this up."

"I wish I was," she'd said, and her voice broke. "I wish I didn't have to do this to you. You're so gonna hate this, Izzy."

"Hate what?"

"What they use. On missions. The _experiments_." She'd started crying in earnest then, and Isaac hadn't been able to get a coherent word out of her. She'd taken his hand and shown him instead. With her new ID card, she was able to gain clearance to a certain locked door at the bank vault. The system wouldn't recognize him and that might trip an alarm or cause problems down the road. 

But he could stand outside and look in. His own HYDRA clearance level did allow him that far; he frequently did after-hours work in this building. So many times he'd been here, right on the other side of the wall, and he never knew...

The smell reached him first, a smell familiar to him after weeks spent volunteering at animal shelters and finding housing for strays. It was a distinctly catty smell, the kind of smell he'd associate with a particularly negligent shelter, or maybe the home of a prolific pet hoarder. But the cages were a bit too big for cats. 

Too big for cats, but far too small to be habitable to the naked people huddled inside.

Or at least Isaac had _thought_ they were people. Then one had turned and  _hissed_ at him, and he saw the pointed brown ears flattening back on his head, the shadow of the twitching tail. The teeth.

And the angry, hopeless misery in its eyes.

He'd turned in the hallway, hand pressed to his mouth. He barely made it to the street before he threw up.

*

They'd had to wait far too long to start the rescues.

"We can't do it right away," Julie had pointed out, "Or they'll know it's me. If they even suspect, Izzy? Then we're both fucking dead."

She was right, of course, which didn't stop Isaac from crying up several nights over it. While he was pouring his feelings into volunteering at the animal shelter and learning to make vegan ice cream, Julie was working her way through the clearance levels, gaining trust within HYDRA.

It was taking its toll on her. She was participating in the destructive missions and, while it killed him to know that his own work was contributing to HYDRA's endgoals, it wasn't the same as seeing the carnage firsthand. Of being the one to raise the gun and fire, to cover her own ass.

"We're going to stop them," she'd say in a low, shaky voice over the top of a shared bottle of vodka, her eyes red, "We're going to save their poor  _experiments_ and then we're going to stop them and that's the only reason we're still doing this." They'd be out, walking around aimlessly because she thought their apartments could be bugged, and so she'd glance over her shoulder to make sure no one heard. "We're not just standing by and letting it happen. We're _not_."

But as she got drunker and drunker, and as time went on, she'd seem less convinced. More hopeless. And since she was still dating Rowan, he could hardly help noticing that things seemed different. That she was unhappy, that she was distracted and distant, that she spent more and more time out at night and came home drunk. And when he asked her what was going on, she didn't have the stamina to lie to him.

He thought she was cheating on him, and she said absolutely not, although he'd like the reality even less. And she was right—he didn't like it. But he did offer up a solution, if only a temporary one. His family owned a vacation house up in the Adirondacks. It was, by a stretch, within driving range, but far enough away that it might not be the first place HYDRA would search. It was a first step, a way to plan.

And it went off without a hitch, seeming almost too good to be true. But then they had to lay low. Who could explain these cat creatures? Or why they'd been made? They'd had names, originally, had been active HYDRA members who tried to sabotage the organization from the inside, just like Isaac and Julie were doing now. And this is what it had gotten them, and so they knew just how careful and quiet they had to be about this. 

So they couldn't try and get the cat mutants adopted out. Nor did Isaac have the heart to have them put down. And that left them with only one option.

And that's how Julie, Murphy, and Rowan became co-owners of former HYDRA agents Brock Rumlow and Jack Rollins.

But there were still more experiments, now under even higher security. Security Isaac designed himself on Pierce's orders—having played his part well, because he played it genuinely. No one would ever suspect nervous, naive, eager-to-please Isaac Murphy.

Which is how he found out the next piece of sickening news before even Julie knew. How he was able to warn her for what was coming.

How HYDRA had managed to secure and weaponize two of America's greatest heroes of legend. And what had been done to them when they tried to fight back.

*

The whimpers go quiet way too fast as soon as Julie steps into the room. Clearly, the occupants recognize her, and are trained to respond. And for all the awe and fear behind the legends, they're unsettlingly docile and pliant when Julie introduces Isaac as a new handler. One lean, shadowy form slinks forward in the darkness and suddenly his hot breath is all over Isaac's face as he sniffs. The other one gets down on the floor, crouching to smell Isaac's crotch, and that's when he sees the scabbed red stripes across his back. Punishment. Judging by his legendary healing rate, the wounds must be recent.

Isaac simultaneously feels like he's been punched in the gut and like there's pure burning rage in his veins. He knows they're not pets, that it's a risk to think of them that way, and so he tries to resist the urge to ruffle their ears and comfort them and find them matching Captain America sweaters. He could maybe knit them hats designed like the shield with star-shaped pom-poms on top or—

"Operatives Captain and Winter, there's been an emergency mission. You'll be responding to this operative, Agent Irwin, codename Crocodile." She makes a face at Isaac; she spent all of yesterday making fun of his codename. But it's more original than  _Eagle One,_ and Steve Irwin was his first celebrity crush. It was only years later, after he finally de-closeted, that he even realized that's what it had been. But he was obsessed with the Crocodile Hunter throughout his childhood and right up into his teens. He seemed to radiate kindness in a way that so few people did. There was always just something his eyes—

"Irwin! Let's go!" Julie hisses.

"Oh! Right. Um, follow me." They do, silently, though judging by their earlier whimpers it must pain them greatly to move. Julie carefully sets everything exactly as it had been and moves the door back into place. They're leashed and collared, but that's mainly to exert a physical reminder of dominance. They respond to Julie's sharp, directive tugs even though one of them could easily drag ten of her. Bringing up the rear, Isaac has full scope of the damage inflicted upon them. The blood and bruises are reflective of the more apparent forms of abuse, but Isaac knows animals. He can read the droop in their tails and the way they keep their heads bowed in Julie's presence. They're not controlled by physical force; someone broke their spirit, and has been continuing to break it over and over again.

Grumpy and Crossbones never looked this bad, and they'd been among the science division's favorites. Who's been doing this to Winter and Captain?

Isaac and Julie help them into the back of the van, lying them on the towels they laid out beforehand. Julie instructs them to lie still while Isaac checks them over, and he does, nervously, careful in the darkness, very aware of their tense muscles and piercing eyes, their hot breath and their teeth.

But then he notes the matted condition of their hair and tails, the patches of fallen-out fur, their scars and blood and barely-contained terror, and he's overwhelmed by pity.

A quick scan locates their tracking devices, and a swipe of a specially designed magnet sends them offline. But Isaac can already tell they're going to need more by way of a checkup than that. They're going to need a lot of care. Without thinking, he reaches forward, ruffling Captain's hair and brushing away the sweat he finds there. With a certain degree of uncertainty, Captain leans into the touch. The pain in his heart eases as he strokes Cap's ears, murmuring a soft string of promises that he's going to personally make sure these two get the help they need. And that no one ever hurts them again.

Julie's on the phone with Rowan. "All right, get your car ready," she says, "We're on our way."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a short crackfic where Steve and Bucky are dogs and won't stop humping Murphy's legs.
> 
> Have I mentioned I get carried away with things?
> 
> (Ask me what Winter's dog name almost was. Ask me.)


End file.
